This is why we need to have 90 dollar games! /s
TL,DR: Company fires hundreds of workers. CEO makes $25.6 million.
Bullshit like this is why our industry is a mess, Nintendo may be greedy fucks but their code is good because the same dudes have been working there since the fucken 80s.
I mean, if you want to emulate a corporate ethos, I don’t think Japan should be the benchmark, either…
Their crunch culture is def bad (they’re going to kill Sakurai one day), but there is quite a few things they do right. They don’t lay people off and their executives take accountability. Iwata took a significant pay cut when the Wii U flopped.
They can’t lay people off, so they just put them in a room with no work to do until they get so bored that they quit. It’s the same thing but different.
I’ll take my chances with the boredom room.
forreal I write as a hobby and I spend as much free time at work sticking it to the boss by writing lol. if they literally handed me a room with little stimuli and let me bring my notebook in I’d be living
Just making sure you realize the company would have the copyright for anything you create while on the clock…
“Fuck, well, publish it as another light novel. I’m sure they’ll quit soon.”
You wouldn’t have a notebook. Any and all stimuli would be banned as the purpose is making your experience horrible.
Also, you get incredibly mundane tasks as well. Maybe you’ll get a couple sheets of random symbols and are tasked to count a certain letter. And if you don’t do this task you can be laid off for underperforming.
Exactly, I would start taking naps and watch movies. You can’t bore or shame me into quitting, the second I know it’s a game, I will be breaking a b**** lol
Whatever you do, please don’t throw me in the
briar patchboredom room!Why would I quit my dream job? Getting paid so sit doing nothing is my life long goal.
TIL Apex had writing behind it
It’s set in the Titanfall universe, there’s lots of lore scattered around. People work hard to integrate a narrative into the level and character designs, to imply plot in incidental dialogue or cinematics, or just literally write text entries that the majority of gamers will never read because only shooting and rare skins trigger their dopamine.
Honestly developer are making great work with how legends talk to each other during game. It’s always really cool
Nobody asked to have some pointless story injected into their online shooters. I’m pretty sure the people that want world-building and narrative and lore in their games aren’t playing online shooters. I know I’m not.
Ok, well, I am. It’s not “pointless story” it’s entertainment and I’m struggling to come up with a game that has zero plot or setting or characterization. Rocket League maybe.
I hope these CEO’s get their reckoning some way some day.
They seem to think it’s all just business and cruelly wielding power is no issue, but I think they overestimate how isolated they are.
They won’t get any kind of reckoning that we’ll understand. They’re rich, powerful, and insulated from pain. They’ve all got golden parachutes via their weaselly networks. There will be no karma, unfortunately.
If we want them to receive a reckoning, it’s on us, the working class, to force it to happen.
My question is when workers in game studios start to make unions. It’s a massive industry and the people actually making the games are constantly fucked over.
Recent and huge progress on that front. It’s an industry wide union, and apparently even recently laid-off workers can join.
Many years ago. But as you said, it’s a big industry, and the US is not an easy place to unionize in.
and the US is not an easy place to unionize in.
Moreso now than ever before.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is right now.
But I don’t think that advice includes people staring at a fast approaching wildfire…
Now can be both the second-best-time to plant a tree and the first-best-time to grab a bucket of water!
Remember everyone, the forest is on fire and there’s not many places to run. The fires of climate change affects the entire world, and this administration and the wealthy that back them will gleefully pour fuel on the flames and let your house burn.
You can stand around begging for rain, asking why the landlord didn’t fix the sprinklers or why he never checked the fire extinguishers or why he’s hiding under his desk clutching the cash register for dear life…
Or you can grab a bucket.
Yes, but there are also European developers. Such as Ubisoft, which previously had major issues with harassment, and probably still does. If they have a union, it certainly isn’t a powerful one.
The French trade union Solidaires Informatique has pursued both criminal and civil charges. Not sure how much that accomplished, but at the very least a bunch of assholes were fired or resigned, so they weren’t completely ineffective.
in my head its because its an industry where going solo is viable and if they arent working at a company thats their goal so they have full contol over the vision and make all the money and one day they want to exert the same creative control over others and get overtime/overwork out of them
It will be used to justify raises AAA prices even more. Not that i care but it will be interesting to see.
And then they feed the documents to a LLM and iterate over it
That’s sad and disgusting.
Apex has a story?
It’s a spinoff from titanfall, a series with a lot of cool world building, it would be a bit weird to have no story at all.
It’s also a live service so they need to
copy fortnitehave an in game explanation for the updatesNo, they have “lore”: a bunch of inconclusive and loosely connected animation shorts, vague plot points, and character bios that give just enough of a reason for their seasonal events to occur and for fans to drool over. Just like every other live service.
While I feel sorry for her as a worker, I do not feel sorry for her as a writer.
Live Service writing for AAA studios has got to be the most disposable form of fiction. I can find old short stories from magazines that closed close to a century ago, but I can’t play the Destiny series from start to finish today?
I think at this points it’s better to not join up with a large developer or publisher. The indie market has better job security.
Or better yet, organize like the Hollywood actors have WGA.
We should pay way more attention to other industries.
I got laid off 3 months after I launched a modern website to replace my former company’s old platform that none of their other developers wanted to work with.
I did exactly what they told me, something they wanted for years and years, and then I got laid off as a thanks instead of a bonus.
lol
Though I ended up getting a job that pays 30% more so I guess it ended up okay.
Haven’t played since they removed Linux support. Will never play again.
This is why we need to have 90 dollar games! /s
Apex is literally free to play
This is why we need copyright laws
In a sensible world we would not allow our society to steal the work of artists and then throw away the artist.
Apex legends? The fully online battle Royale style competitive shooter? Can anyone tell me why a game like this needs a “character writer” anyway? I’ve never played it so maybe there’s some grand story I don’t know about, but to me this sounds like writing a character for Counter Strike which I think we all agree would be completely pointless.
I’ll try to explain, I’m not a specialist in the lore of Apex legends. But the game is based in the world of Titanfall. It released in 2019 with a few characters. Each 1 or 2 season bringing a new characters with new abilities and background in the story. They have done a pretty good job so far and I really enjoy each characters.
CS at least back in the day didn’t have a class based gameplay, each characters had the same abilities. So I guess it doesn’t really compare.
It’s more like asking why you need a writer for an Overwatch character than CS. The characterization is half of the point and, more importantly, sales on cosmetics, compared to CS/Halo/MW/Whatever
